NHL 2012-2013 Discussion Thread

The 2012 season is over, time for a new thread. Parise and Suter went to Minnesota, Weber signed with Philly but Nashville has until Wednesday to match, and the season itself is in question with the expiration of the CBA.

Oh, and Rick Nash was just traded to the Rangers for Dubinsky, Anisimov, Tim Erixon (who?), and a 1st round pick.

As I said on FB: "First Suter goes to the NW division, then Shea Weber goes to the Eastern Conference, and now so does Rick Nash. Even without the Wings making some big moves the other GMs are making sure our division foes get worse!"

As I said on FB: "First Suter goes to the NW division, then Shea Weber goes to the Eastern Conference, and now so does Rick Nash. Even without the Wings making some big moves the other GMs are making sure our division foes get worse!"

For the record I totally expected an immediate match from Nashville on the Weber offer sheet. The fact that we haven't seen it yet...

Damn salary cap. I want to go back to the good old days of Mike Illitch paying everyone who is good to come to Detroit.

As I said on FB: "First Suter goes to the NW division, then Shea Weber goes to the Eastern Conference, and now so does Rick Nash. Even without the Wings making some big moves the other GMs are making sure our division foes get worse!"

For the record I totally expected an immediate match from Nashville on the Weber offer sheet. The fact that we haven't seen it yet...

Damn salary cap. I want to go back to the good old days of Mike Illitch paying everyone who is good to come to Detroit.

Their issue isn't the cap, it's how front loaded the contract is. Cash becomes an issue when he would be getting $14m the first year and it's probably guaranteed even if there is a lockout this year.

Well, Nashville matched. Here I was hoping that all these other GMs were going to make sure all the good players left the Central so Detroit would be back on top easily.

Hopefully for Nashville and Weber's own sake he is actually happy staying. Wouldn't want to be locked into a huge long deal some place you don't actually want to stay. Did Philly convince him that Nashville wouldn't match because they couldn't pay the money up front? There is no incentive to trade Weber ever after they sink so much money in over the next calendar year, plus as time goes on nobody will want to take on a guy with a larger cap hit than the salary.

I know these long term deals expect the player to hang it up after they hit 35, but what if they want to keep playing? They aren't going to be able to pull moves like Jagr or Lidstrom where you make $3.5 or $6.2 million in your late years, you are scraping on $750k. I guess they'll shoot off to the KHL? But that is dangerous as I don't think it's crazy to think there might be an agreement between the NHL and KHL 10 years from now to follow each others contracts (with some conversion factor).

I wouldn't be surprised if Kovy's deal went through if he were a few years younger and didn't violate the league minimum wage at the end. But it just looked so bad since he was going to be like 44 and making like 500k.

So are the Bruins, apparently. (I've heard a rumor, unverified but from a source that has previously been right on many occasions, that the teammate was Andrew Ference. In related news, Andrew Ference is awesome.)

The whole thing is a case of the owners demanding a new agreement that protects them from themselves...some more.

I mean seriously, by all independent accounts the deal coming out of the last lockout crushed the players. The owners basically got every single thing they wanted. Now the league can't survive under these conditions? Fuck you, owners.

"Why is it shocking that the players would make 50%+ of the NHL's hockey-related revenues? If the owners got gunned down Godfather III-style tonight, we could have hockey tomorrow morning & it would be equally good, yes?"

"Why is it shocking that the players would make 50%+ of the NHL's hockey-related revenues? If the owners got gunned down Godfather III-style tonight, we could have hockey tomorrow morning & it would be equally good, yes?"

I find it really sad that the north american leagues go through such ordeals every few years lately. :-/

With the ever evolving revenue streams, who can blame the players, especially since their careers are relatively short and fragile?

At the same time, the owners share the blame as well with all these massive contracts given out to mediocre players. Sure, the player may have had a break-out season but that is no guarantee he will be able to perform at that level going forward.

I'll give you 5% of 36% of the ~230 million American adults. (source) Which works out to 4 million people.

Of course it's more about the percentage of people and how it's ingrained into the culture, than the USA having 10x more people at all than Canada.

I might argue for 5-6m (the poll was strictly favorite sport, which wouldn't encompass all US hockey fans). Recent Stanley Cup viewership is pretty close to the same number with a Canadian team (2011) and lower without (2010, 2012). It's far from a perfect metric, but I'd still guess the number of hockey fans is closer to 50-50 than 80-20.

Does everyone think that there will be a lockout ?, the Swedish Elite League has specifically said they will not accept short-term (less than full season) contracts for NHL players but the second tier league has now said they will accept them. I hope that in the case of a lockout the SEL are true to their word, seeing NHL players in the league would probably mean greater attendance at games but at the cost of hampering development of our younger players.